


Rice and Ruin

by avulle



Series: Rice [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 10:52:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3324827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avulle/pseuds/avulle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina is not prepared for the memories the curse gifts her with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rice and Ruin

Regina is not prepared for the memories the curse gifts her with.

A lifetime’s worth of false memories—this is something she should have been prepared for.

Something she thought she _had_ been prepared for.

But she wasn’t.

Because she still remembers ripping her beloved father’s heart from his chest, and tossing it into the flames, and she’s not prepared for _more_ memories of him.

_Happy_ memories.

Memories where her father dies from a heart attack—and she is right there by his side, while he whispers, and tells her that they _were_ happy (not that they still _could_ be, that they could start over), and that he wished her only the best.

Memories where when he died, she was holding his hand, and on his face was a look of _adoration_ , and not _betrayal_.

No, Regina is _not_ prepared for that.

 

It haunts her.

Long after she has killed Kurt, and allowed Owen to leave.

Long after she has manipulated the huntsman’s heart to force him into her bed.

As timeless, unchanging days melt into timeless, unchanging years, it haunts her.

A set of memories that she knows are false, but feel real all the same.

She remembers being born Regina Ortiz Mills, upper middle class, but not quite wealthy enough to actually be _rich_.

(To actually have _power_.)

She remembers her mother, Cora _Mills_ , who insisted that Regina take her name, because she believed bearing a Puerto Rican surname would only ever stand in Regina’s way.

(Would stand in _Cora’s_ way.)

She remembers her father, Enrique Ortiz, who came from not-quite-enough-money-for-Cora, and who would call her Mija, and whisper in a language that did not exist in the Enchanted Forest (but Regina can now understand all the same).

She remembers how her father was the cook of the family, and would make her dishes that Regina knows for a fact never existed in the Enchanted Forest.

She remembers a _race_ of people that looked like her father—that she put a great deal of effort into pretending she was not a part of.

(Because her mother felt that it could never _help_ , only _hinder_.)

(And no matter the world, Regina has _always_ listened to her mother.)

So she makes herself arros con gandules (and it’s _good_ , because she remembers her father teaching her to make it in memories that are both altogether too real and not even close to real enough), and weeps into her rice for what could have been, and what never will be.

 

The city belongs to her, wholly and truly, so after she has interred her father, wept into her rice for altogether too many days to count (so many that she can’t even remember anymore), she decides that she will honor the false memories of her dead father.

She reaches into the fabric of the curse, and she _pushes_ , and she makes sure that the supermarket has a massive selection of hispanic food, and that it’s always fresh.

She pushes, and she reaches into the false memories of every citizen of Storybrooke, and she makes sure that every single one of them know of her lineage, and she makes sure that they all voted for her anyways.

She pushes, and she is tempted—she is so very tempted—to make them _hate_ it.

To make them all hateful, and force them all to know she is latina and despise it and be completely powerless to stop it.

Cora surely would have approved (both of them, she imagines).

But she doesn’t.

She reaches, and she pushes, and she makes damn sure that not a single one of them give a flying fuck that her fictional middle name is Ortiz, and that she can speak Spanish, and that her fictional father came from Puerto Rico.

She pushes, and she makes sure that when everyone shops for their sad, miserable little (white) familes, that they buy from the fucking hispanic wall of the supermarket, and that they _like_ it.

It is a petty rebellion about something that _doesn’t_ matter against a dead woman—who is fictional to boot—but she does it anyways.

And, she likes to think that maybe her (fictional) _papi_ and her (very dead) father would have approved.

That night, she manages to make arros con gandules without weeping into her rice, and she never bothers to make it again.


End file.
